


October 19th - Pumpkin Carving

by omgericzimmermann (HMSLusitania)



Series: 13 Days of Halloween [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 13 Days of Halloween, October 19, Pumpkin carving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HMSLusitania/pseuds/omgericzimmermann
Summary: Pumpkin carving with the SMH never goes as intended. Day 1 of the 13 Days of Halloween





	

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first day of 13 Days of Halloween! I hope everyone has fun with this whole challenge!

Bitty doesn’t think it’s a good idea to give the SMH pumpkins, carving tools, or liquor at any given moment. Doing it all at once seems like it’s just borrowing trouble, but as long as he can stay happily in his little corner with his sugar pumpkin, gutting it, getting the innards ready for cooking, he’s happy.

The rest of the kitchen, though, is a disaster. He had the foresight to spread out newspapers on the ground to catch any pumpkin guts, but it doesn’t seem to be helping very much. Lardo, Shitty, and Nursey are all high in addition to drunk, and Bitty’s heard the word “crossfade” a few too many times. Lardo is curled protectively around a pumpkin almost as big as she is and is pulling out the guts with her bare hands. Nursey is doodling abstract designs on the pumpkin with a sharpie. Shitty isn’t even bothering, since he’s curled around Lardo with the same protectiveness she’s offering her pumpkin.

Ransom, Holster, and Chowder are drunk, carving their pumpkins sloppily. Bitty doesn’t trust them with knives, but Holster had picked him up and placed him on the other side of the kitchen when he’d attempted to take them.

It leaves him, Dex, and Jack as the sober participants. Dex is applying his normal, functional precision to his pumpkin, occasionally pausing to remove Nursey’s hand from where it’s wandered to his thigh. He does this with more calm and collectedness than Bitty has ever known him to demonstrate when he’s around Nursey, and he can hope this is a positive sign for their relationship.

Jack is frowning at his pumpkin, his face screwed up in concentration. Bitty’s almost surprised he doesn’t have his tongue poking out between his teeth. But it’s also sort of adorable and Bitty is sort of…

Well no, he’s not smitten. That would be stupid. What kind of idiot finds his clearly straight captain attractive?

 _Anyone with eyes_ , his unruly subconscious replies.

Bitty shrugs it off and keeps gutting his pumpkin. He’s pretty sure none of them have ever had truly homemade pumpkin pie, and he’s excited to see their reactions.

“Hey,” Ransom says suddenly. “What do we do with all the guts?”

“Turn them into pumpkin seeds,” Holster replies.

“No, not the seeds,” Ransom says. He holds up a handful of the slimy, orange insides from his pumpkin. “I mean the _guts_ , bro.”

“Just throw ‘em away,” Bitty replies.

“No, no, bro,” Ransom says. “ _Bro_. We egg the LAX house.”

“You are not taking my eggs, Ransom,” Bitty replies.

“Not your eggs! We egg the LAX house with pumpkin guts!” Ransom exclaims. Bitty stares at him in horror, but Holster has already joined in.

“Yes! Bro! BRO!” he bellows. “Collect!”

He and Ransom scramble to pick up all the pumpkin guts in one of Bitty’s mixing bowls (Bitty doesn’t even bother trying to fight them) while Shitty, Lardo, and Chowder join them. Bitty looks to Dex for sympathy, but Dex is occupied trying to remove Nursey from his lap and is doing a poor job of it. So Bitty looks to Jack, who meets his eye and looks concerned, amused, and resigned all at once.

“Well,” he says, picking himself up off the floor and collecting a handful of pumpkin guts. Bitty feels more offended by that than he does Jack’s too small black t-shirt and cuffed-to-the-elbow plaid flannel. “It is the LAX bros.”

“Oh lord,” Bitty mutters, covering his eyes with his hand. Someone (he suspects Shitty) shoots a pumpkin seed at him and it catches him in the face. So he lowers his hand, sighs, and collects the stringy guts from his sugar pumpkin, adding them to the bowl. “Fine.”

The others cheer. They leave Dex and Nursey on the floor and charge across the street, each taking handfuls of pumpkin and lobbing it at the LAX frat. It splatters on the walls, a glorious Pollack of orange on white, like someone’s vomited up the creamsicle ice cream cups they give you in grade school onto the LAX’s frat. Bitty’s own handful splats against the downstairs window, and then a light flicks on.

They scatter across the street back to their Haus, collapsing in the kitchen in fits of giggles. Bitty finds himself sinking low with his laughter, falling against the nearest hard surface for support. To his immediate embarrassment, the nearest hard surface is Jack’s abs.

Jack catches him, huge hands on both of Bitty’s shoulders, but he doesn’t push him away. It takes Bitty a second to realise it’s because he’s laughing too.

Then out of nowhere, Shitty ruins the moment by upending his jack-o-lantern on Jack’s head, effectively trapping Jack inside the pumpkin. Everyone else bursts out laughing, but Bitty looks up at Jack’s face, or at least the pieces he can see through Shitty’s now upside down eyes and mouth carvings.

“Shitty,” Jack says. He doesn’t sound upset, or disappointed. Just confused. “Shitty why.”

“Because!” Shitty exclaims, and then dissolves into fits and can’t be roused for proper answers. Bitty can’t imagine how he’s going to survive law school.

“Because now you’re Jack the pumpkin king,” Holster explains, before he turns and high-fives Ransom.

Jack nods, clearly not comprehending, his pumpkin head bobbling. “Right. I’m going to go wash my hair.”

His voice is muffled by the pumpkin.

“Can I have my pumpkin back?” Shitty calls after his retreating back.

“No!” Jack shouts. And Bitty thinks to himself that this is going to be a pretty good Halloween.

(He also thinks that maybe he’s going to have to go get the pumpkin out of Jack’s room before it starts to rot, but that’s a problem for another day.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to participate but can't find the prompts, they're at both the collection link somewhere on this page. It can be both art or fic or whatever else!


End file.
